"Road safety" initiative from Henry's Cat et al

So, there is further talk of extending the congestion charge in London to motorcyclists in the interests of road safety. Gee, us motorcyclists should be thankful that those in power are so concerned for our safety, huh?

Let’s look at how one goes about making the bikers safer. Well of course, one could bastardise the ‘congestion’ charge in an attempt to tax as many of them as possible off the road completely, so that they’ll be nice and safe tucked up at home instead. But wait. Those wealthy bikers might just cough up the tax. How will this initiative improve the safety of the poor little darlings then? Well, presumably, it won’t. But the estimates suggest that it would improve the safety of Transport for London’s revenue stream to the tune of £750,000/week, thus greatly adding to the safety of Bob Kiley and his Board of Directors’ large pay–packets. So someone will end up being safer, one way or the other.

Forgive me for wondering whether this is merely another tax to ‘discourage’ people from (read, punish people for) doing something that the government/right–thinking society doesn’t approve of, while raising a good few bob to spend on the things that enjoy greater government approval. Once again the motorcyclist appears to be the social pariah/easy target.

UPDATE: Apparently Ken has now said that he has no intention of extending the charge to motorcycles. It just occured to me that the original story was from the Evening Standard website. They, of course, are the guys with whom Ken had a massive run–in over the “concentration camp guard” remarks. I wonder whether they’ve basically written a scare–story here, based upon an out–of–date briefing document, just to get all the London bikers (including all the new ones post Congestion Charge) all riled up and to make Henry’s Cat look bad?

Training / Marathon target

Ran the Cranleigh 21 miles (and 151 yards) on Sunday as a tester for the London Marathon on 17 April 2005. I unofficially timed myself at 02:29:35 for 21 miles, and my official time was 2:30:28 at the finish, in 38th position. According to the calculators, this suggests that a marathon in the window 03:10:00 — 03:20:00 should be possible. Not completely sure what I’m going to aim for as my target yet. Other people’s experience suggests that the calculators are always wrong and you do increasingly worse than the prediction as the distance increases. This would seem to be bourne out by the fact that my recent Reading Half time would suggest a faster marathon in the window 03:00:00 — 03:10:00.

However, I suspect that I haven’t got the discipline to go off at the 7:30/mile that I probably ought to for a good even–paced run. I will probably end up going off for sub–3:10 glory at about 7:00/mile, gradually dying throughout the second half, like most people do, and absent a catastrophic blow–up, finishing somewhere in the 03:20:00 — 03:40:00 bracket. But I am definitely heartened by the Cranleigh result. Worst case scenario is that I have to walk the last 5 miles at 3.5mph, which suggests that a respectable sub–4 hour finish is still looking likely.

So I think my realistically achievable public target should be 03:15:00 — 03:30:00, with a secret back–of–the–mind, don’t–tell–anyone target of sub–3:10, should I have an really good day on the 17th.

Cat

An exciting development about the Livingstone/Henry’s Cat story. Yes, I am aware that this is from 2004. I never claimed to be cutting–edge.

I may be small. I may look sweet. But baby, do I infurieeeete.

Reading half marathon result

1:26:10 on a nice easy course in chilly conditions. Pleased.

Trained monkeys

I liked this from the Times, about lawyers suing for slander:

“In one case in 1639, Mr Justice Berkeley stated that it would not be a slander to say of a lawyer that he knew “as much law as a monkey” because such a statement was consistent with the lawyer also knowing more than the monkey. Saying of a lawyer, though, that he knew “no more law” than a monkey would be actionable. A sophisticated legal differentiation. And, happily, one quite evolutionarily advanced from anything a monkey could manage”.

"Aaaaaaaw Naaaaaaw", said Ken Livingstone

I’ve said for a long time that Ken Livingstone sounds very much like Henry’s Cat. This website shares that view and has linked a .wav to prove it.

Oh Carolina (cont.)

Oh Carolina

Email

I have had to close down the catchall email address for this domain. Yesterday, my mailbox was clogged when I received over a thousand emails addressed to different aliases at the domain. In each case, the subject was what appeared to be a name and the body was just a different name. They were still coming in at 20 per minute when I shut off the catchall. Anyone got any idea what that was all about?

The result of all this is that you can now only email me using the mail me option on this site or if you know one of the specific aliases that I have left open.